Hi,
I've just bought me an old Waterman "show" pencabinet , originating from an old penshop. Its in great shape & allows showing 226 pens in the tray's!
The cabinet is equipped with build-in T L lamps poviding separated light sources for both "show"sections. The cabinet is mounted on 4 small pivoting wheels for easy manipulation.
Dimension are: 0.96 meter wide, 0.60 meter deep & 1.00meter high.
The cabinet can be safely closed at the back with build in locks. ( 3 doors)
Opening the locks one can reach both showing sections & there are also the 10 extra tray for complementary pens & a lotof extra storing place for pen boxes & other.
My questions for you Waterman adepts are:
1- Is the cabinet originating fom the US or was it made in France ?
2- When was it made- It looks from the sixties to me, looks somewhat like a juke-box of that time!
3- Is this a relatively rare find or are these quiet common ?
Thanks in advance for your help !
I will start cleaning the cabinet during coming week-end before putting my collection in.
Then I have to convince my wife allowing me to put it in our guest room( this might become the hardest task !)
After that I will surely post more pictures .

Hi Francis,

I think that your cabinet is French or at least the ground glass Waterman sign is, I might be wrong but I don't think that style of 'W' came into use until after the French part of the company became the powerhouse and bought the trademarks from the UK and Empire holder and the US holder.

I would say that your guess at the 1960's is about right, it might be late 50's.

Cabinets in various designs were once in every Watermans and every other pen makers outlets so they were not exactly rare in their day but I should think that a lot of them ended up in skips(dumpsters) as FP's became less of a mass market thing so by now there can't be too many of them in the wild so yours is at least uncommon.

You might have to get the glass sign remade to read Sheaffers though.

Enjoy your find, it will look great with your pens in it, cheers John

That case is definitely not US, and judging from the logo, would date to the 1980s, perhaps to the 1970s. I do not think it could be as early as the 1960s. Sorry not to be more precise, but my expertise is in earlier stuff, so I only have a rough idea of when that logo was adopted.

Thanks for your input John & David !

John, as you rightfully remarked :Being (primarely) a Sheaffer collector, I now need to hunt for a nice glass Sheaffer sign which could cover the Waterman sign.

It really is a never ending collector story, and in fact we should we be happy for that!

I think David is correct : After looking more carefully to building details of the case I also think the case most probably dates from the mid seventies.

Thanks & regards, Francis